Have you ever wanted to get off the electricity grid? You might have a number of reasons to do so. What about saving money? The economic breakeven may be here sooner than you think. There’s an interesting and eye-opening thing you can do with energy usage and cost numbers (step 4, below) to make your own cost estimates.

Let’s say that you have decided there are four things you want to do at your house. One, you want to reduce your energy use. Two, you want to buy solar. Three, you want to buy a battery system to back up your solar when the sun is not shining. Four, you want to go off the electricity grid.

This is how the process of battery-backed solar might work in the near future. However, you can get started with step 1 & 2 right now, and later with steps 3 & 4.

1) Reducing Energy Consumption

Let’s say you use 575 kilowatt hours (kWhe) of energy per month, a typical usage rate in southern Arizona;

200 kWhe is a typical reduction per month by using energy efficiency techniques like insulating shades for your windows, weatherization, insulation for your attic, or getting a an evaporative cooler “piggyback system” added to your air conditioning system.

This translates into:

Your usage has been 575 kWhe X 11¢/kWhe, a typical energy cost in So. AZ, which equals $63.25 plus basic service charge, and other charges per month, going down to:

Your new usage, with a 200 kWhe reduction, would be 375 X 11¢/kWhe, or $41.25/month + other base utility charges.

If you were to leave it at that and not do the next steps, you savings would be $22.00/month, $264/year, $5280/20 years.

2) Adding Solar to Your House

Now that you have reduced your energy consumption, when you add solar, you won’t have to buy as many panels. Instead of paying for maybe 5.6 kilowatts of capacity (the average used by the National Renewable Energy Lab, at https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2016/37745.html), you now would buy around 3.9 kWe.

Your new solar panel array would deliver energy at about 7.0¢ per kilowatt-hour to your home, plus financing, so maybe 8.5¢.

Batteries are the big unknown in this process. Costs are falling quickly, and there is a goal by the industry to bring them down to 14¢/kWhe, when combined with solar. This is a bit more costly, when compared to the roughly 11¢ average cost of electricity by the utilities of southern Arizona. However, you only have to get a portion of your energy from batteries, and with lower solar costs here in the Southwest, the deal gets sweeter. For example, you can get 35% of your energy needs met with energy efficiency, from step 1 above, and 45% from solar, from step 2, and 20% from battery energy, from step 3, well that leads us to that point I opened with. . .

4) Going Off-Grid . . . “There’s an interesting and eye-opening thing you can do with energy usage and cost numbers.”

First, you have to boost the number of solar panels a bit to power the batteries, so your cost of solar would go up from 8.5¢ to roughly 10¢/solar kWhe, fully financed. Let’s project that future battery costs are 20¢/kWhe, fully financed.

Take a look at the following table and if you copy these values and formulas onto a spreadsheet (or ask me for a copy at russlowes@gmail.com), you can change the percentages in column D, and as long as the total equals 100% at the bottom of that column, all the figures will automatically and accurately update! Likewise, if you change any of the projected costs/kWhe in column E, the spreadsheet will auto-self-adjust. But, you math wizards out there already knew that!

This has been about the process of going off the grid, but there are reasons to stay on the grid. The main one is so you can share your electrons with others so they don’t have to use coal, gas or nuclear energy from the grid. However, if the utilities resist the solar revolution, we may not have much choice. If the utilities keep fighting solar rooftop and keep putting onerous charges on our bills, the best choice for you and your family, and for you and your business, might be to go off-grid.

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*A side note about the above NREL chart: One interesting thing about the residential-size solar (rooftop solar) versus centralized utility scale is that with rooftop there is much less non-power-generation cost. With centralized solar there are new transmission requirements, more distribution costs, land acquisition costs, switch yard and substation and a myriad of other costs that are not required, as much, as with rooftop solar. Right now, rooftop solar is cheaper when you consider these non-generation costs. I believe that rooftop solar will widen the gap of cost benefit over large utility-scale centralized solar in coming years.

Two utilities, Tucson Electric Power and its sister subsidiary UNS Electric, are applying for rate hikes with the Arizona Corporation Commission. Included in these rate cases is a troubling and unprecedented restructuring of how rates are applied. These proposed rate reshufflings are bad for the families and businesses in these monopoly areas. Additionally, these proposals are assaults on family and business-owned rooftop solar energy installations.

TEP and UNS have engaged in a public relations campaign to promote the inaccurate idea that rooftop solar energy is costing non-solar customers more than if there was no additional rooftop solar installed.

Tucson Electric Power has recently made a number of erroneous statements about rooftop solar costs. However, we will focus here on the most glaring blunder, in what has NOT been said. The utility company does not consider the “opportunity lost cost” for not going with rooftop solar. TEP again made this error of omission in a recent exchange with our County Board of Supervisors, who are opposing the proposed rate shuffle. That is, what happens if families and business owners, schools and local governments in the TEP service area do not install solar panels? TEP is installing centralized utility-owned solar energy plants, and this solar is costing non-solar customers much more than the customer-owned rooftop solar. See the table below, which further explains this.

Examples of Typical Un-Subsidized Energy Costs for New Power Capacity in Southern Arizona, in Cost Per Kilowatt-Hour

* The vast majority of this cost will be borne by the ratepayer directly benefitting from this installation.

**Energy efficiency comes in many forms and at many different costs and benefits. The ratepayer-

borne portion of this, on average is likely under 1¢ per kilowatt-hour saved.

Recently TEP just secured more fossil fuel power capacity. This will cost much more for non-solar customers in total dollars, and in cents per kilowatt-hour.

TEP claims that family-owned solar energy increases costs for its non-solar ratepayers. In this claim TEP is probably really talking about what the utility company losses will be. The company financial losses to customer energy efficiency and solar investments are real, if you do not count the gains to the company in terms of grid diversification, performance fees TEP earns on customer energy efficiency investments, etc. However, these gross costs (before these other offsetting benefits) are very minor, at this point of grid penetration, well under 5 percent.

What TEP and UNS Electric ignore, in this “solar costs non-solar customers argument,” is that all the other options of electricity generation expansion are more expensive than customer-installed rooftop solar. Centralized solar built by the utilities costs non-solar customers far more than rooftop solar. Fossil-fuel generation is even more expensive, as well as polluting and climate-changing. In addition, the 0.5¢/kilowatt-hour cost that is purported to be shifted to non-solar customers, is actually returned to customers numerous times, by diversification of the grid, reduction in peak gas-generated electricity, and by many other benefits that solar provides to all families and businesses.

Consequently, it is in the best interest of our families and business-owners that customer-owned rooftop solar continues to be installed, under the current net-metering system. This is not best for the utilities only under the current business models that are now outdated. These models need to change. The Commission needs to require that TEP and UNS update their business models to mesh with the new technologies, the new ways in which people are living, and the improving costs of options customers did not have until recently. Additionally, the business models need to be changed to reflect the far lower impact the newer technologies have on the environment and on human health.

When a rooftop-solar customer invests in solar, that family or business pays all of the construction cost, all of the interest and all of the maintenance costs. These costs add up to about 11¢ per kilowatt-hour if financed through a home equity loan, or a business loan. When a utility builds solar, it pays for these three categories and more (land acquisition, transmission lines, etc.), but then passes it on to the ratepayers. Similarly, when TEP acquires more natural & fracked gas capacity, it pays for these components of overall cost and passes them on to the ratepayers.

TEP and UNS should not be allowed to ignore the fact that if solar rooftop is not invested in by families and businesses, the utilities will have to invest in other more expensive power-generation options and pass those costs on to their customers. To ignore this is deceitful and only works to further undermine the trust of ratepayers in the TEP and UNS Electric monopolies.

>>> Action to take! For anyone wanting to comment before these cases close, you could address your comment as follows. Nobody knows when these two rate cases will close, but it will probably be open through July or August of 2016.

Re: Rate Cases E-04204A-15, E01933A-15-0322 and E-00000J-14-0023

Dear Commissioners Little, Burns, Stump, Forese and Tobin,

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Methodology and References

a) This is calculated based on typical sale price of $3000/kilowatt of D/C electrical capacity, .8431 conversion rate to A/C electricity, a lifetime average degradation rate of 13.2% over the 30 year minimum life span, with a capacity factor (average output, compared to A/C rating) of 20.85% with 5% APR financing for a home equity line of credit (HELOC).

b) Based on reviews of leases for solar homes in Tucson, Arizona, by one of the authors, Russell Lowes.

d) Based on $2800/kW D/C, 0.8431 conversion rate to A/C, a 13.2% average degradation rate for a 30 years, with a capacity factor of 20.85%, with 9% average financing, per Tucson Electric Power Integrated Resource Plan, which lists 8% as the average corporate bond rate, 10% as the average rate of return on equity and a typical 50/50% blend of the two financing options.

e) Based on $2200/kW D/C, 0.86 conversion rate to A/C, a lower 9.5% average degradation rate for a 30 years, with a lower capacity factor of 18.3%, with X% average financing, based on the Tucson Electric Power Integrated Resource Plan, which lists X% as the average corporate bond rate, X% as the average rate of return on equity and a typical 50/50% blend of the two financing options.

f) Based on what TEP is typically getting for Power Purchase Agreements and what it uses as the basis for its proposal to reimburse solar rooftop owners.

g) Gas-produced power from Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis—Version 9.0, at: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90/, p. 2 (click on “View the Study”). This is at the lower end of the two combined Gas Peaking and IGCC (more toward baseload) options. The average of these two is 16.6¢/kWhe. Additionally, see table below for similar approach to gas-generated electricity costs. This has to take into consideration more peaking energy costs for electricity that rooftop solar would displace. These costs can be as high as 21.8¢/kWh, according to Lazard, p. 2.

h) , p. 2, energy efficiency is taken from the top of the range from Lazard’s (see g).

Nuclear is a drain on our ability to deal with climate solutions, energy needs.

Dr. James Hansen is dead wrong. He is wrong about nuclear energy being able to make a contribution to solving global warming. He has little or no grasp of the economics of nuclear energy, and that leads him to mistakenly support this doomed option.

Let's just forget for a moment a key negative aspect of nuclear energy. Let's assume that there is no greenhouse gas from the nuclear fuel cycle, even though the two lifecycle meta-studies done so far both peg the number at approximately sixty-five grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour, more than six times that of wind energy.

Let's focus instead on costs of new reactors in the U.S., which make them infeasible to solve energy and global warming problems. The newer round of reactors Dr. Hansen would like to see are very similar to the last group of reactors finished in the 1980s in at least one aspect - economics. These reactors require giant nuclear steam supply systems, oversized condensers, large plant footprints, huge reactor containment buildings and an insane level of complexity compared to the other options - and even more complexity and construction material than the last round of reactors.

There have been recent proposals for smaller reactors. The U.S. nuclear program started out small and chose to go with larger reactors to reduce cost per kilowatt. The small reactors would just spread out the radioactive waste, relative cost and complexity issues over a wider ground.

Simply put, the nation, and the planet, can neither gain traction against global warming nor solve its energy problems practically and cost effectively, with nuclear energy. The nation and the world would in fact be set back by the extreme additional cost, compared to a better planned energy strategy. That alternative strategy includes solar, wind, energy efficiency, storage and energy management technologies, plus a rapid phase-down of fossil and nuclear energy.

Let's just forget that an accident like the one at Fukushima can endanger an entire nation's nuclear energy program. This is where Japan switched from nuclear to mandated energy cut-backs and massive increases in fossil energy use. It is five years later and things still are not back to normal. However, the Japanese have amplified their renewable energy program.

The last significant round of U.S. nuclear construction was completed in 1987. The average reactor was completed for around 3,100 dollars per kilowatt of capacity. See Brice Smith, Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change, found at www.ieer.org/.

***Editor’s note: Dr. James Hansen, the renowned climate change scientist, has said that nuclear power is essential to combat climate change. A number of environmentalists disagree including Lowes and Mainland.***

“This lower-cost clean energy blend would not

only produce less greenhouse gas, but also save

$92 billion/year.” –Russell Lowes

Let's just forget about other issues like national security, and the likelihood that centralized nuclear plants remain vulnerable not only to terrorism and foreign attack but also natural disasters, accidents and operator error. Let's ignore the Fukushima disaster as well as the damage that some U.S. nukes have already shown in tornados and hurricanes, plus the creeping onset of sea-level rise and storm surges. Let's also put aside the problem of disposing of long-lived radioactive waste, which is enormously expensive, technologically intractable and probably insoluble.

We'll just continue on with what 6,211 dollars per kW would cost for one reactor. If we ran this out from this year to 2023, at four percent inflation, the cost per kW would equal 8,173 dollars.

One of us, Russell Lowes, has been accurately projecting nuclear costs since the 1970s (only four percent off on Palo Verde reactors projected in 1978 for 1986 completion). He has come up with twenty-seven reactor construction cost factors, perhaps the most varied list of factors compiled for nuclear construction costs.

The estimate is that the reactors of the early 2020s will cost about twenty percent more in real dollars than the reactors finished in the last big wave of the mid-late 1980s. This considers factors that would make reactors cheaper than in the inflation-adjusted cost of the past, like labor cost declines in America. And it also takes into consideration factors that would increase the costs, like material cost increases, and increases in plant robustness requiring more cement, copper, steel, etc.

If an average U.S. reactor in the future is 1,350 megawatts of capacity, this average nuclear reactor would cost 9,808 dollars per kW in 2023. That's 13.2 billion dollars per reactor.

“When you put a dollar into nuclear, that dollar

would cause only four kWh to be delivered to

ratepayers, versus seven for wind.” –Edward Mainland

Assume a higher than average thirty-year capitalization cost, say fourteen percent instead of twelve percent for a typical large fossil plant, due to increased risk (per the Standard and Poor's ratings agency). The cost per kilowatt-hour just for construction, for an eighty-five percent plant output average, would be 13.8 cents per kWh over forty years.

This would be upped by operation and maintenance costs. See Keystone Report, "Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding," page 42. Add 4.3 cents per kWh for operations and maintenance, plus transmission and distribution of say 7 cents, to deliver the average cost of nuclear energy to 25.1 cents per kWh.

This compares to solar power purchase agreements of 7.5 cents for production, 13.5 cents delivered, with prices continuing to improve. It compares with wind at 3.5 cents, 10.5 cents delivered, and energy efficiency at 3.5 cents. It compares to rooftop solar at about 12 cents delivered with net metering, including on-site transmission and distribution.

Let's put this on a larger scale. The U.S. spends about one trillion dollars on all energy each year. If it were to build, say, a hundred nuclear reactors, the cost would be about 1.325 trillion dollars for construction. With the interest, operation and maintenance, etc., this would cost ratepayers in the U.S. about 173 billion dollars per year.

This 173 billion dollars is almost half our current annual electricity outlay in the U.S. The equivalent energy produced from solar and wind, and saved from energy efficiency improvements, per kWh, is shown in Table 1.

The 11.8 cent average cost for energy received and saved in the Table 1 energy mix would translate to 81 billion dollars per year, compared to the nuclear option of a hundred plants at 173 billion dollars per year. By the way, this lower-cost clean energy blend would not only produce less greenhouse gas, but also would save 92 billion dollars per year.

We have only a limited amount of dollars to put into energy. When you put a dollar into nukes, you get about four kWh. When you put that dollar into centralized solar, you get about seven kWh. Rooftop solar gets you about eight kWh. Wind delivers about nine kWh. Energy efficiency delivers twenty-nine kWh saved for every dollar spent.

The U.S. has limited capital resources for energy. They shouldn't be wasted. When you put a dollar into nuclear energy, instead of putting the same dollar into one of the cheaper options, for example wind energy, that dollar would cause only four kWh to be delivered to ratepayers, versus seven for wind. This creates a deficit of three kWh, that now needs to be recovered from this mismanaged dollar.

As Amory Lovins said, "If you buy more nuclear plants you're going to get about two to ten times less climate solution per dollar and you'll get it about 20 times slower than if you buy instead the cheaper faster stuff."

Nuclear energy is plainly a boondoggle, one that is made even more expensive when you consider its subsidy costs, compared to the other options covered here. It would be one thing for James Hansen and others to consider nuclear energy if it gave you extra value, compared to the other options. Instead, it is a financial drain on our ability to deal with climate solutions and energy needs. It is time to nuke the nuclear option.

Russell Lowes is the primary author of the book, “Energy Options for the Southwest, Nuclear and Coal Power.” This was used by citizens creating initiatives at California electric municipalities to cancel Units 4 and 5 at the Palo Verde nuclear plant. Lowes projected a cost of $6.1 billion for the nuclear plant, west of Phoenix, compared to the industry projection of $2.8 billion. The plant came within four percent, at $5.9 billion, perhaps the most accurate projection for a nuclear plant in the U.S. Lowes testified before the Arizona Corporation Commission, as an expert witness on the economics of power plants. Today he heads SafeEnergyAnalyst.org, and is the Energy Subcommittee Chairman for the Southern Arizona Sierra Club Rincon Group.

Edward Mainland is co-founder of Sustainable Novato and currently Secretary of Sustainable Marin, both volunteer groups in Marin County, California that promote long-term community sustainability and local self-reliance. He has been Senior Conservation Fellow at the International Program at national Sierra Club headquarters in San Francisco, and co-chair of California State Sierra Club’s Energy-Climate Committee.

UNS Electric, Inc., is the first of three utilities in Arizona to file a rate case to kill off the booming residential and business solar industry. The utilities, UNS, Tucson Electric Power and Arizona Public Service, are undertaking a coordinated effort to increase rates, increase basic fees and wipe out family-owned solar energy rooftop installations. They hope to achieve this by implementing a new rate structure for consumers that includes three nasty components. These tactics are particularly detrimental to families and businesses in Arizona. UNS is the first to propose it, but if the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) approves UNS’s proposal, the other two utilities are sure to follow. The ACC is the regulatory commission for Arizona energy utilities.

First, UNS Electric wants to virtually eliminate a long-standing Arizona policy to put solar on parity with other energy options. This policy, called “net metering,” has been adopted by almost all states in the U.S. Now UNS wants to reverse it in Arizona. Currently under this policy, your electric utility pays you the same rate for the excess solar electricity that you produce as you pay to buy energy from the grid when you need it. In other words, under the current system, if you have solar panels, the utility buys and sells energy from and to you at the same retail rate. UNS Electric wants to cut what they pay you in half. And then they would turnaround and sell the power that they buy from you to your neighbors for twice the price. Second, UNS wants to increase the basic fee from $10 to $15 per month. This is bad in so many ways. It means a much bigger (50% bigger) portion of your bill would be beyond your control. When you reduce energy consumption, a move better for your pocketbook and for the planet, the fee would not go down. When you put solar on your house, which is better for your pocketbook and better for the planet, your fee would not go down. It is a disincentive to using your energy more wisely. And, because UNS gets the vast majority of their energy from coal and gas, it is a penalty to families that do the right thing by reducing their coal and gas-produced energy.

Finally, UNS wants to implement a demand charge for residential customers—something that no other major Arizona utility has imposed on residential users and is typically only used for commercial customers who are better able to control and track their usage. The “demand charge” would be a rate (cost per kilowatt-hour) calculation that would be assessed by UNS, and without notice to the customer, based on each customer’s highest energy peak usage over the worst 15 minute period in each month. So if your overall usage for a given month is lower than usual, if during that same month someone ran a number of appliances while the A/C was on over a 15 minute period, the cost per kilowatt-hour for the entire month would go up based on those brief 15 minutes. This would happen even if your peak was of no consequence to UNS. Not only have TEP and APS intervened in the UNS rate case on the side of UNS, all three companies have recently put forth the supposition that rooftop solar energy installed by one family is the cause of increased costs to other families. UNS and the other two utilities have been throwing out this concept, without referring to the other alternatives. Statements of costs of solar rooftop without comparing it to the other options are meaningless in the bigger picture. Energy costs for most other UNS options are much more expensive to these families without the participation of rooftop solar. If for example, UNS purchases solar energy at a large centralized solar facility, the cost per kilowatt-hour is currently about 6¢ for production, and going down each year, plus 6¢ for transmission and distribution, totaling 12¢/kilowatt-hour. This is after taking out about 2¢ from subsidies. New gas plants are about 13¢/ kilowatt-hour, with a likelihood of increasing fuel costs. This gas plant price is also is after subsidies are subtracted. New coal plants are about the same cost per kilowatt-hour. When UNS buys solar, or for that matter, gas or coal, the cost of construction is entirely passed on to the ratepayers, which includes families with and without solar. With utility solar, all ratepayers pay all the utility-solar-plant land acquisition costs, the environmental permit costs, the siting costs, equipment maintenance costs, increased transmission and distribution (T&D) costs, grounds cost, insurance, switch yard costs and more.

When a family or business decides to go rooftop solar, there are also system costs. However, instead of passing on these costs to other families, that solar family pays all the construction cost, all the interest costs, all of the other costs except a small portion of the normal transmission and distribution cost. The non-solar family would only pay a small added transmission and distribution cost. But this cost is very small compared to centralized plant T&D costs. The rooftop solar energy does not have to be transported on long-distance high voltage transmission lines. Rooftop solar largely uses existing lines. Under the UNS proposal, rooftop solar gets sold locally by UNS at a virtually 100% profit over a time span that is in an instant, not even the normal measurement of a year for return – that is price-gouging. In sum, the non-solar family pays much less for system expansion when the neighbor next door expands the system by 5 kilowatts, for example, compared to when the utility expands the system by that same 5 kilowatt of capacity. Thus, the message that the Arizona utilities are crafting, that rooftop solar is costly, is false. The much higher costs are with the other options of utility power plant construction and acquisition. Moreover, solar energy offers substantial environmental benefits. However, even without addressing these important advantages, solar rooftop costs less to all families, families with and without rooftop solar energy, than the alternative utility power plant expansion. I am hoping that many many ratepayers will submit comments to the ACC on this rate case. Please look over the action section below and at the URL in this section.

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TAKE ACTION to keep the solar rooftop option thriving in Arizona! Send your comments to the ACC to the Sierra Club Chapter Director, Sandy Bahr (sandy.bahr@sierraclub.org), as she has offered to get the 13 copies of our testimonies to the Arizona Corporation Commission, so that they will be a permanent part of the “docket,” or rate hearing case. Put at the top of your comments: Regarding: UNS Electric Rate Case Docket # E-04204A-15-0142You might address it with something like: “Dear Chairman Little and Members of the Arizona Corporation Commission:”You can also find out more and comment at the Sierra Club’s http://tinyurl.com/UNSratecase

The Obama administration is already doing all it can realistically do. Despite its “all-of-the-above” façade, it favors nuclear power. To start with, the Energy Department is essentially a nuclear department. Professor Moniz is [was] Secretary because of his nuclear ties. DOE’s national laboratories are basically nuclear labs. It organizes international nuclear R&D groupings to encourage worldwide commitment to nuclear power. The Obama administration has created an inter-departmental Team USA, including State and Commerce, specifically to encourage domestic nuclear industry by promoting nuclear exports. The White House dedicates a staffer to this task. Secretary Moniz emphasizes his commitment to “jumpstart” the U.S. nuclear power industry. DOE subsidizes new domestic nuclear plants through loan guarantees. The nuclear Navy provides government-trained operating personnel. And to facilitate the licensing of new plants, and extend licenses for existing ones, the administration’s appointments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have ensured that it remains industry-friendly.

We keep hearing from certain people that nukes are essential to solve energy and global warming problems. They say that nuclear energy is carbon-free, or some say low-carbon. They are neither. They say that nuclear is low-cost. They say building another round of nuclear reactors is essential for the U.S. and the world. It is neither low-cost nor essential. To build more megawatts of nuclear energy would be a mega-distraction.

Such an emphasis would weaken our response and ability to stem future climate chaos. I will take on the mission here of showing how the horrendous costs of nuclear energy makes this source an unpractical one. It is especially unpractical now, during our quest to truly course-correct on climate change.

The bottom line is that electricity generated from new nuclear reactors is about 24 cents per kilowatt-hour. About this 24 cents per kilowatt-hour:

1) This is double the electricity price for the U.S. on average .

2) The cost of 24¢ for nuclear electricity is more than twice the 10¢ cost of solar electricity in Arizona, about twice the national average for solar.

3) It is more than twice the cost of wind-generated and delivered electricity.

4) Most important, nuclear electricity is 8 times the 3¢ national average cost of energy efficiency.

5) It is about twice the cost of new coal and gas-generated electricity.

You might ask, well how do we know how expensive a reactor will be? We have nuclear plants scattered across the nation, so how much did these plants cost in the last round?

First, I have been using empirical analysis of the cost of nuclear energy since 1977. We used regression analysis in a book released in 1979. This book was instrumental in convincing investors to pull out of the Palo Verde Generating Station Units 4 & 5, America's largest nuclear plant, west of Phoenix. Our analysis projected the cost of the Palo Verde to be $6.1 billion in 1986 actual completion dollars. The managing utility company, Arizona Public Service Co. (APS), projected $2.8 billion at the same time, and they never waivering on its projection until construction was well under way.

That down-graded plant of 3 reactors was finished for $5.9 billion. The APS projection was overrun in costs by 111%, while our projection was slightly over the final cost by less than 4%. Of all the reactor projections done across the land that we could find, ours was the most accurate nuclear reactor projection in the nation.

We used empirical approach to costing reactors, with regression and other modeling techniques. Apparently APS used the tried and true method of sales pitch estimation.

So how do we jump from then, when the final reactor at PVNGS was completed in 1986 to now? The method I use is four-fold.

1) First, find out what the average cost of the last rush of reactors, which happened around 1987;

2) Then apply general inflation to that cost to bring it up to today’s cost;

3) Third, apply a projected inflation to the year that a new reactor might be completed; and

4) Finally, weigh a series of factors that might increase or decrease this figure.

For step 1, a low/conservative estimate on reactor average cost for 1988 was $3100 per kilowatt of net plant size.

Putting that $3100 into 1987 dollars at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Standards inflation calculator yields $6105 per kilowatt of electrical capacity in 2013 dollars.

For Step 3, I project a common 4% inflation rate through 2022, the first year it is likely for the next small group of reactors in the U.S. to be completed. This yields a completion cost in 2022 of $8689/kWe.

For Step 4, I have come up with a survey of 27 reactor construction cost factors. This is the most varied and numerous list of items I have seen, so far, from all my reading on reactor costs. I estimate that the reactors of the early 2020s will cost about 20% more than the reactors finished in the last big wave of the mid-late 1980s.

In this 4th step, I have considered factors that would make nukes cheaper than in the real (inflation adjusted) dollars of the past, like labor cost declines in America. I have also taken into consideration factors that would increase the costs like certain material cost increases, and increases in plant robustness requiring more cement, copper, steel, etc.

After comparing the changing conditions since the time the last reactors were completed, I have come to what I consider a fairly accurate projection. It probably won’t be as accurate as our PVNGS <4% accuracy level, but I am fairly sure it will be in the ball park.

After going through this process, the final figure I project for the next round of nukes built in 2022 is $9149/kilowatt of plant size. This is in sharp contrast to most sales pitches from utilities today, where they project more like $4000 per kWe. It would be good to remember that the average overrun was 220% in the last round. They sell these plants by unrealistically lowballing the construction cost.

What does that come out to in cost per kilowatt-hour? Just like with solar and wind, you can break this down to the kilowatt-hour of electrical capacity (kWe) level, and then apply production time (hours) to it to get kilowatt-hours of electricity delivered (kWhe). You can also multiply these kWe units to the typical sizes of the wind turbines, solar panels, or coal or nuclear plants.

Here are the calculations.

This is what it would cost roughly, to install 100 reactors in the U.S., a figure being brought up from time to time by members of Congress.

$9149/kWe

X 1,350,000 kWe plant size

= $12.351 billion

X 100 reactors occasionally proposed

= $1.2351 trillion total construction cost for 100 reactors

X 14% loan payback per year (capitalization rate)

= $172.9 billion per year for 30 years

X 30 years

= $5.187 trillion paid just for construction and loan and tax expenses, not counting fuel or operation & maintenance, nor transmission and distribution.

That $172.9 billion/year will cost the average person in the U.S. (assuming an average of 350 million people into the future):

$494/person/year for 30 years if we have a 350 million population, or

$988/taxpayer/year if we have 175 million taxpayers.

So, how do we get to cost per kilowatt-hour? For each kilowatt of plant capacity, you can calculate the cost to construct, the capital cost and then calculate the electricity the plant produces over a typical 40 years (before major costs of renovation add to the equation). Then simply divide the capitalization cost by the kWhe. Here we go (simply). . .

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Cost Portion of the Equation:

$9,149/kWe

X 14% capitalization rate =

$1,281 in capital cost/year

X 30 years

= $38,426 capital payback over 30 years for each kWe of size – This is just the total capital cost over 30 years.

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Electrical Output Portion of the Equation:

1 kWhe

X 8766 hours/year on average

X 85% average capacity factor (electrical performance) over the life of the reactor

X 40 years

= 298,044 kWhe over 40 years – THIS is the e output over 40 years. Note that the capital payback is 30 years and the plant runs for a projected 40 years (before major capital upgrade, if it runs longer).

------------------

The Final Capital Cost/kWhe Calculation:

$38,426 Capital cost over 30 years per kilowatt of installed electrical capacity

/ 298,044 kWhe e output over 40 years

= 12.9¢ per kilowatt-hour of electricity.

-------------------

There was a multi-disciplinary report put together by the nuclear industry, along with governmental and non-governmental entities called the Keystone Report.

This report projected fuel and operations and maintenance costs at:

4.3¢ per kWhe for fuel and O&M. That, plus. . .

+ 12.9¢ capitalization cost

= 17.2¢ production cost (pre transmission & distribution)

+ 7.0¢ per kWhe for transmission & distribution

= 24.2¢ per kilowatt-hour to your meter

-----------------

What are the implications of such a high cost to your household, and to the larger society, the U.S. in this case?

I’ll leave that up to your imagination, as you ponder that solar is currently less than half the cost, while it continues its cost plunge, energy efficiency is about one eighth the cost and wind is also about half the cost. Getting back to Victor Galinsky’s quote from the beginning, the only way in which nuclear energy can compete in the market is in a skewed way, with the U.S. Government favoring it all the way along. That in fact is how nukes have gotten as far as they have. It’s time to nuke the nuclear option!

SunZia Fact Sheet and Contact List – Who to Write to Stop this Project

Below are some facts about the SunZia proposal and who you can write to help stop this environmentally destructive project. This is a partner article to another at: http://arizona.typepad.com/safeenergyanalyst/2012/08/sunzia-the-making-of-a-slave-state-first-power-then-transmission.html However, this factsheet is from the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club.

1) This is a transmission project, and does not involve approval of any renewable energy projects. No one knows exactly how much renewable energy generation will result from building the proposed transmission lines and support towers.

2) A 2008 economic feasibility study has established that transmitting the proportion of renewable energy claimed (81 to 94%) in the BLM’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is very unlikely to occur, because this mix would not be economically competitive in the absence of a CO2 emissions tax. The same study concluded that under current market conditions, the most likely energy mix to result in actual power purchase agreements would consist mostly of fossil fueled energy. The BLM’s Environmental Impact Statement never acknowledged these findings, despite repeated submission of this third party study by local stakeholder groups. This violates federal regulations regarding the use of the best available data in the EIS.

3) The owners of the SunZia project also own a very large planned and permitted natural gas fired generation plant in southeastern Arizona that is located along their proposed transmission lines. The BLM never acknowledged the relationship between the owner’s interests in the two proposed projects, despite the disclosure of this relationship by the owners to another federal agency (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). This violates federal regulations regarding the use of the best available data in the EIS.

4) The SunZia project would open up a new industrial scale infrastructure corridor on 40% of its proposed route, most importantly through environmentally sensitive lands along the Rio Grande and San Pedro Rivers. On one route segment alternative, over 80% of the proposed path would be through previously undisturbed lands.

5) Other proposed transmission projects, such as the Southline Project, would co-locate with existing infrastructure and disturbed lands to a much higher degree than the proposed SunZia project. SunZia is a project that would cause significant new impacts to our dwindling wildlands, and would not live up to its purported renewable energy benefits.

To email your Representatives regarding these points, especially regarding the use of best available data in the EIS (points 2 and 3):

By Russell Lowes, Sierra Club Rincon Group Energy Chair, August 4, 2014

A year and a half ago my wife, Lhasha, and I took the leap! After 17 years since buying our house, we finally installed solar panels.

Some of the crew members that installed our solar panels, picture by R. Lowes

This article shows how solar is affordable now. Prices have come down even more, since we installed our solar panels. The costs of owning a solar array to power your home are now far cheaper than buying power from your utilities. We had done a number of things to get ready for solar. We thought it would be best to first reduce our energy needs, so we engaged in a number of energy and water-saving techniques:

Added an evaporative cooler onto our air conditioner, so that we could switch back and forth with this piggyback system – we also put in a barometric damper between the AC and cooler so we would not have to do anything but turn one off and the other on (no getting up on the roof or putting metal sheets in place);

Replaced our lawn with desert landscaping and put in a grey-water system on our clothes-washer (with a Watershed Management workshop more water than energy-saving);

Replaced our A/C system with a much more efficient HVAC system; and

Insulated behind the cabinets on our kitchen cabinets.

We did all these efficiency things first, to save energy and to reduce the panels we would need to buy. After saving up for solar by late last year, we decided to get three or four quotes. We received quotes from Sungevity, Technicians for Sustainability and Net Zero Solar, and a ballpark quote from Geo Innovation. These quotes were for similar products, and had similar contracts.

I was hoping to go with Sungevity, because they linked with the Sierra Club in donating $750 to the Club per installation. However, Net Zero Solar in this instance provided the best bid. Their cost, pre-tax reduction and rebate, was $8925 (without the utility rebate, which we signed over to them). Technicians for Sustainability gave a $11,029 quote, and Sungevity gave a $16,910 quote (gross cost, pre-tax benefit reductions). So, you might ask, how quickly does solar pay for itself? How good of an investment is it? Here is a breakdown of how I would answer this question. First, it largely depends upon how you pay for the system. If you are buying the system and are comparing the cost of the system to what you would pay in electric bills, that would require a projected interest rate for a loan, and an electric price prediction. If you are borrowing to buy the system, and are borrowing money at say 6%, it will be different than buying with cash. For my personal approach (after all, it is a personal approach), I do not think that investments will yield very much in the future, as the stock market is very high, so here I focused instead on the electric grid comparison. I also believe our U.S. economic foundation is weak and that we are likely to go into hyper-inflation in several years, similar to the early 1980s. I believe this will increase electricity bills substantially. It is important for me to emphasize to you: once you invest in solar, there is a good chance that your investment will be good for well over 25 years. Some solar panels are now still in use after 40 years. Your solar investment is not likely decrease in value like stocks or bonds during an economic downturn. It will keep its value and maybe increase in value if the cost of electricity does what I think it will do. This is how I personally approach it. If you are borrowing or leasing, you could come up with a different approach, or you could modify the table below. If you have positive equity in our house, home equity loans are a good way to go. The positive impacts on the environment are matched by the positive impacts on your wallet. Solar energy is economical now.

Some states in this fine nation export goods in such a way as to benefit all or many within the state. Let’s take the examples of maple syrup from Vermont, fish catch from Alaska, honey from Utah, or high-technology solutions from California. All of these examples incur some handsome benefits for many or all of the state population in export revenue. That revenue can come in the form of tax revenue or in the form of business income, and perhaps high numbers of jobs provided or even more intangible benefits, like crop pollination.

Not so with energy exports of Arizona. With more than a third of our electricity being exported, there is very little benefit to any significant population of this state. Sure there are some construction jobs that actually don’t go to out-of-state construction workers, and really do go to in-state residents. Sure there are some maintenance jobs for running these plants that also go to in-state residents of Arizona.

However, there are a scant number of jobs in coal, gas or nuclear power production. For every million invested in coal production, only 6 jobs are produced. Fossil-fuel and nuclear plants are capital intensive industries, where the money goes largely for capital-intensive power plant and construction components, many of which are produced overseas.

In contrast to 6.9 jobs for coal and 4.2 jobs per million dollars spent on nuclear energy, solar energy installation produces about 13 jobs per million dollars spent. Whenever you put money toward low job-producing options, you deplete funds for higher jobs-producing options. To put money into coal and nukes reduces overall employment, because that money would have gone to other projects, or perhaps even just into more discretionary spending, which has a much higher jobs output than 4.2 or 6.9 jobs per million dollars spent.

Energy exports from Arizona are not taxed in any significant way that would bring further benefits to the state, except for property taxes that benefit the local areas a bit. We do not tax the payroll that goes for power plant components from out-of-state -– and mostly out-of-country -– workers who create these parts and machinery for the coal, nuclear and natural gas plants. We do not put a sales tax on the exported energy. We do not tax the income of the out-of-state corporations like Bechtel, GE-Hitashi, Toshiba-Westinghouse or others who build these plants.

Then comes SunZia, which some think of as Sunzilla, a monster transmission facility. This system would transport electricity from coal and natural gas producing plants right through Arizona. The company behind SunZia, SouthWestern Power Group, would have you believe that the 16-story high transmission lines would primarily transmit renewable energy. However, every one of their many options for routing their transmission lines goes by a planned fossil-fuel plant in southeastern Arizona and other potential gas plants in New Mexico.

The owners of the Bowie, AZ fossil-fuel plant and SunZia apparently own no renewable energy facilities to speak of. This is a good example of green-washing, where they promise renewables and then you actually deliver dirty energy. Explicitly put, they are using renewables as a cover to deliver their dirty fossil fuel plant.

It is SouthWestern Power Group that wants to build a large natural gas plant north of the Chiracauhua Mountains, near Bowie. It would pollute the air of Chiracauhua National Monument, the Coronado National Forest lands, the Wilcox Playa and the Wilcox area. This plant is east of Tucson, toward the New Mexico boundary line.

The wind from this facility would blow pollutants to Tucson during our hot summer months. This fossil-fuel plant would pollute a large region including parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico. Of course, winds don’t stop at boundary lines, so the pollution, like all pollution of fossil and nuclear plants, would thin out and spread globally.

There is no need for this huge transmission line. Instead, there is a large precedent for energy efficiency improvement in the U.S., in the Southwest and in Arizona. The Arizona Corporation Commission, which is a top regulator for electricity and its transmission in Arizona, has established a requirement for Arizona of 22% reduction in power production in Arizona by 2020. This large electricity reduction is going to make new transmission lines much less viable. On the other hand, to build transmission lines essentially refocuses attention on production, rather than reaching our energy efficiency potential.

All the while, if Arizona were to use its energy as efficiently as California, which has focused on EE programs for a long time, it would reduce its overall electricity production by 52%!

With all this energy reduction going on, why would it be beneficial to build SunZia? It is highly beneficial for out-of-state and overseas corporations. For typical Arizona residents, it is the opposite of beneficial.

Arizona stands to lose environmental quality, and the economic negatives that go along with these environmental quality reductions. The towers and lines themselves contribute to visual blight of the beautiful natural settings of Arizona, and New Mexico. The lines will contribute to transporting more electricity from natural gas – an absolute certainty, with the tie-in to the natural gas plant near Bowie.

Economically, this is not the way to go. Many studies have been done on the average cost of natural gas electricity, on coal electricity, on wind and on the cost of energy efficiency. Here are rough cost estimates for each of these delivered electricity options, or in the case of energy efficiency, saved electricity costs:

Costs Per Kilowatt-Hour of Newly Constructed Power Plant Electricity Delivered or Electricity SavedCoal 13 cents per kilowatt-hourNatural Gas 11 centsNuclear 24 centsSolar PV 6-12 cents, depending upon solar gain for each areaWind 11 centsEnergy Saved/Efficiency 3 cents (yes, as in one eighth the cost of nuclear energy or one fourth of coal)

We have enough base load electricity generators for our current use in Arizona, regionally and nationwide, on average, already. We will have even more than enough base load electricity generation with the reduction in load that will occur with nation-wide and state-wide energy efficiency portfolios.

The least-cost approach is energy efficiency. The next least-cost approach is EE mixed with renewables that are distributed generation, in other words, renewables that are generated and distributed locally. The federal Bureau of Land Management is the agency that is controlling this environmental impact statement (EIS) process. The Draft EIS for SunZia has been done now. It is very biased. For example it makes the claim that this line is for renewable energy transmission, without any significant justification for this claim. The BLM is clearly in cahoots with the company promoting this highly profitable but destructive energy system.

I ask the BLM to clarify what the cost is of the “no-build” option for Arizona and New Mexico, compared to the cost of the SunZia project. I want the BLM to go back to the drawing board and get perspectives on what a no-build option would ultimately do to the total energy cost outlay from the citizens of Arizona and the region. The BLM should contract with reputable firms that do not have a hand in perpetuation of the 20th Century technologies of coal, nuclear and natural gas electricity production. They should consider companies like Synapse, the New Rules Project and others that are not enmeshed in the technologies of the past.

The BLM knows that this system has variable boundaries, as electricity marries electricity, once it gets on the western grid system. However, the BLM also knows that it can reasonably quantify what electricity will cost with a system that is unneeded versus what it will cost with a grid system that is not unnecessarily expanded. The BLM knows that if we put the energy dollars into energy efficiency and distributed generation renewables, the overall cost of energy to citizens in the West will be lower.

So, is Arizona headed to becoming a resource-depleted slave state, a third-world country-like state? Is this beautiful state going to be beholden to outside interests that profit from this potential deterioration? Or is Arizona going to start taking the reins in hand and steer away from this outside domination?

Do we want to go down the tired path of fossil and nuclear energy, or do we want to ramp up our energy efficiency and blend it with renewables, cleaning our environment and reaping economic benefits of cheaper energy costs and more jobs?

A deadline of August 22nd has been set for this important phase of opposition to this project.

In 1973, at the height of the OPEC Oil Embargo, America was coming to grips with the concept of limited oil reserves. During that year, all companies, citizens and governments in the U.S. used a total of 77 quads of energy—that is, 77 quadrillion British thermal Units (Btu).(1)

Thirty-eight years later, the country’s annual consumption is 98 quads,(2) only 27% more than in 1973.

“Wait a minute,” you might ask, “our economy has expanded much more than that, right”? You would be right. Our economy expanded from $4.93 trillion to about $13.19 trillion. These figures are in 2000 dollars with the inflation adjusted out.(3) Yet, all of the energy that we use as Americans -- living in houses, driving everywhere, producing goods and services, governing our nation, states, counties and cities -- adds up to just 96 quads, just 27% more than almost 4 decades ago.

That means that we had a 267% increase in economic output, an increase that is radically more than the 27% energy growth. When you factor in our conversion from a medium manufacturing country in 1973 to a lighter manufacturing country today (manufacturing uses more energy than services) the energy equivalency needs to be adjusted downward. However, still, our improvement in energy consumed per dollar of economic output since 1973 is undeniably impressive.

This is illustrated by the table below.

So how did we do that? How did we increase our economic activity with so little energy expansion? We did so by saving energy. Saving energy falls into two categories: energy conservation through cutbacks in the use of energy, and what I will call energy efficiency, through improving the way goods and services are produced. This article and the table above, address only energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency includes producing more services like delivering packages around the country for less energy. It also includes producing more goods for the same buck, like reducing the plastic and metal in a radio that performs the same function.

How Are YOU Saving Energy Through Energy Efficiency?

In all likelihood, you are contributing to this increased energy efficiency. You may not even know that you are buying something that has been manufactured in a way that has improved in efficiency.

Take the clothes you are wearing. Since 1973, that first year of increased energy awareness in the U.S., clothing has been dyed using more effective technologies, like using electrostatic adherence techniques. That has allowed manufacturers to use less dye, which means producing less dye and reducing all the energy that used to go into manufacturing. You may not have even known it.

On the other hand, if you have changed the type of light bulbs you use, you probably do know that compact florescent lights save about 75% of the energy that old-fashioned incandescent bulbs use. These CFLs have improved in recent years to give better lighting. For example, the U.S. Government Energy Star-rated CFLs now start out with the same amount of light almost the instant you turn them on, the amount of mercury has been reduced, the light spectrum has improved, and the annoying hum has been eliminated.

Even some power plants have contributed to our energy efficiency gains. These power plants have increased their thermal efficiency, which means that for every 100 units of heat they produce, they now convert more of that heat to electricity. That reduces the need to produce so much heat (raw energy production) and pump so much water to cool these plants, which uses a tremendous amount of energy.

With that in mind, below is a graphic of the energy efficiency categories that will be helping America reduce its energy use per dollar of economic activity, or per average item bought. This is a projection of what might happen between now and 2020. The point of presenting this is to show the vast array of efficiency techniques that we both have been using and are still improving upon.

The improvement in energy efficiency since 1973 has saved more energy than all the additional energy expansion since that year. This will continue on into the future, and negate the need for additional power plants and oil consumption for transportation and more.

An earlier version of this article appeared in the April-June 2010 Sierra Club Rincon Group Newsletter.

Which cooling system is best for energy use? Which is best for water use? Which is best for reducing CO2 output of electrical plants?

For several years, a business columnist at the Arizona Daily Star regularly berated evaporative coolers as water wasters and outmoded technology. He said refrigeration was the way to go in the modern world. Many readers disagreed with him but they gave only qualitative arguments. We decided to see if we could find some quantitative data to compare the two systems. We put together our data on our own rooftop systems. One of us (Roy) has had only evaporative coolers since he came to Tucson in 1960. The second author (Russell) has a combined evap/air conditioner/heat pump unit.

Although evaporative coolers used to be the standard cooling device for Tucson homes, they are less common today, so a brief description of how they work is in order. You’ve probably noticed that even on a very hot summer day, when you come out of swimming pool you find yourself shivering. This is because it takes energy to evaporate water (or any liquid for that matter). This energy, called the latent heat of evaporation, comes from your body and cools it. The evap cooler uses the same principle. It is a box with a tank of water, pads of aspen fiber, corrugated paper, or composite (MasterCool), a pump to distribute water to wet the pads, and a blower fan to pull air in through the pads and force it into your house. The air is cooled as it flows through the pads by the evaporating water. On a hot, dry summer day, this method of cooling is very effective; however, because less water evaporates when the air is more humid, these coolers are admittedly not as effective during the humid monsoon season.

Also, as you probably know, Tucson’s water contains lots of dissolved minerals. These minerals precipitate out on the cooler pads eventually making them useless. To combat this problem, the more modern coolers have pumps that empty out the water tank every eight or twelve hours of operation, thereby purging the salty water. This is good for cooler pad life but uses more water. Because this latter type of cooler is more common today, we included the use of this pump in our experiment.

Refrigeration or “air conditioning” systems are based on the Joule-Thomson effect: a gas cools when it expands. For example, when you let air out of a tire, it is cool. Here a mechanical pump compresses a gas (usually Freon), which warms it. It then goes through a copper coil where air cools it until it condenses. The resulting liquid then flows through a small opening and expands, causing it to cool, and chill your house.

In the table above, we summarize the energy and water consumption of the two types of coolers. Since our electric bills are usually the first concern, we start there. Our data in column 2 are taken from a number of research papers. There is an amazing spread of water usage, almost a factor of ten, in usage for similar houses, so we have used mid-range values that would apply to Tucson. The $0.113/kWh (kilowatt hours)used in Column 3 for calculating the energy cost comes from dividing Roy’s last July bill of $42.91 by the 380 kWh used.

Next we determined the cost of the water used by the evap cooler. Tucson water has a lower rate ($1.39/ccf) for less than 15 ccf (hundred cubic feet – 748 gallons) and much more ($5.14/ccf) for over 15 ccf. We assumed that folks would use some amount of water that fell into the higher category, so estimated $3/ccf as a reasonable average. This results in the total cost for the two systems in Column 9.

The trickier part was figuring the total water usage, Columns 4, 6 and 9. It may come as a surprise, but air conditioning or heat pump refrigeration is not a water-free process. Water—lots of it— is used in the generation of electricity. You may have noted clouds of steam coming from the cooling towers at power plants. Much of the cooling water is recycled, but even so about 0.5 gallon of water is used to generate one kWh of electrical energy at the Tucson Electric power plants.

Hydropower is even more water consumptive, as a huge amount of water evaporates from the reservoir behind the power dam. Lakes Meade and Powell lose almost a million acre feet per year and although some of this must be budgeted to irrigation, recreation, and flood control, at least 4 gallons/kWh could be attributed to hydropower. Nuclear power is even more water intensive than coal plants. Since we are on the Western Power Grid, it is difficult to say what fraction of our local power comes from which source. Once again, we used an average, and calculated 0.8gal/kWh as a reasonable estimate.

There are also indirect water consumption and environmental factors associated with electricity that must be taken into account. Electricity production uses water in the coal and uranium mining process. Extraction of water at these mines often devastates the local environment around the mines. Another area of environmental impact is that of CO2 production. We address this in the last column of the Table. Here you can see that the evap uses so much less electricity that the CO2 impact is 75% lower than refrigeration.

The Table reflects these assumptions on energy and water consumption. It also compares the total energy and water consumption for a typical home in the Southwestern deserts. Depending on the assumptions, the results are quite variable. For example, if you predict that the energy costs per kilowatt-hour in this area are going to increase, which many energy analysts project, then the evap cooler gains favor. If you plan to buy a super-efficient A/C, then this option gains favor. We did assume a high efficiency A/C, but there are even higher efficiency units becoming available.

There are also other factors not considered in this analysis. For example, some people do better, health-wise, with an evaporative cooler, while others do better with A/C. All air contains bacteria, mold and fungi. These microorganisms can even be beneficial for your health, but some people have problems with the very dry air an A/C produces, while others have problems with the moister air an evap produces. To most people it does not seem to make that much difference, except that in the driest conditions, many people say they like the moisture of the evap for their skin, hair and overall health.

Ultimately, the data seem to suggest that environmentally evaporative is the better choice, but using A/C during the most humid times, and using the evap the rest of the time is still a responsible option. Perhaps the most important lesson is not to use either unnecessarily – turn down the thermostat. That didn’t used to be an option for the old evaportative coolers—they were either on or off—with a high or low option. The modern evaps, however, offer affordable thermostats which pre-wet your pads, turn the system on and off like an A/C thermostat, and allow you to program the hours of startup and shutdown. These thermostats let you further reduce your water and energy consumption.

As for initial cost of system, and of repairs, refrigeration systems are much higher in cost than evaps. Evaps take more maintenance, but the routine maintenance is significantly lower in cost than the infrequent maintenance needs for refrigeration units.

What Can Homeownders Do to Reduce Energy and Water Consumption in Cooling Their Homes and Businesses?

Homeowners have several options if they want to reduce energy and water consumption and still cool their homes during our hot summer months. If you are willing, like Roy, to weather the humidity, then the lowest cost option is the good ol’ evaporative cooler. If you aren’t quite that tough, you can do what Russell has done and install a “piggyback” unit, or cooler/heat-pump-A/C combo. This allows you to use the evaporative cooler during the drier months of April through June and September through October. It also allows you to use the evap during the drier parts of the days July through August. However, when the humidity increases and evap is no longer cooling efficiently, you can turn it off and the A/C on. If you do get a piggyback,

it is important to get a “barometric damper” which swings freely to open to whichever system you turn on. These allow you to not do anything but shut one system off and the other on. If you have a piggyback, you never want to run both systems at once (see picture of piggyback).

Home insulation is also important, especially with refrigeration. Some of the wide variations in experimental results for cooler energy use are no doubt due to the quality of the insulation of the house. Finally, note that in this article we are discussing retrofitting existing buildings. If you are building new, there are many ways to reduce your heating costs to nearly zero and greatly lower your refrigeration or evap consumption. But, that is another story—or at least another article!

References:

For evaporative cooler water use:

Public Service of New Mexico, PNM, has a study at www.pnm.com/environment/cooling.htm

The real choice is not nuclear versus coal, but nukes & coal versus the reasonable alternatives.

There is massive opposition to coal now, which comprises about 45% of U.S. electricity. You can see smoke from the stacks or read about its CO2 emissions.

Opposition to nuclear energy is also amassing. Nuclear also produces CO2 emissions, which are growing ever-greater. It emits invisible radioactivity, uses even more water, and is much pricier. Here are some of the problems with nuclear energy.

Safety Issues Persist: The world has 436 reactors. In order to have a significant contribution to world energy, 1000 reactors are projected. Even if future reactor accidents improve by a factor of 10, the chance of a reactor meltdown would be roughly one more Chernobyl-like “sacrifice zone” by 2050.

Terrorist Issues: Shortly after the 9/11 New York jetliner crashes, the NRC corrected itself saying that airliners could destroy U.S. reactors. There is an even greater threat at the adjacent spent fuel cooling pools, housed in non-hardened buildings which, if breached, could create a meltdown.

Poor Economics/Subsidies Required: Nuclear electricity would run about 25 cents per kilowatt-hour to your meter. Current Tucson electricity is about 11 cents. New coal would be about 16 cents, wind at 12, solar photovoltaic at 24, gas at 13. The best option, however, is reducing energy with better lighting, architecture, insulation, A/C efficiency, etc. Energy efficiency averages about 3 cents. Numerous nuclear industry officials have said they will build no new reactors without taxpayer loan guarantees.

Two Ways to Worsen Global Warming: Investing 1 dollar in nuclear rather than energy efficiency, you forgo saving 8 times the electricity. In other words, you can invest 1 dollar in nuclear and get 4 kilowatt-hours – or you can invest in energy savings and get 33 KWH. Investing in nuclear energy will dominate energy dollars, setting back the real options.

Second, nukes produce about 110 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. This is 11 times the CO2 of wind, double that of solar, and many times that of energy savings/efficiency. It gets worse if you include 1 million years of waste storage.

Water Consumption Is Highest: Water lost to the environment at Palo Verde is about 0.8 gallons per kilowatt-hour. Coal consumes 0.5 gallons. With solar PV, wind and energy savings, water use is negligible.

National Security Is Diminished: We import 80-92% of our U.S. nuclear fuel. Energy independence is set back with nuclear.

Waste Legacy: The U.S. courts have ruled that nuclear waste much be safeguarded for 1 million years, 25,000 times the 40-year operating life of a reactor.

Russell Lowes is Research Director for www.SafeEnergyAnalyst.org. He was the primary author of a book on the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant, the largest U.S. nuclear plant upwind of Tucson about 125 miles. This book was used in a campaign to successfully stop two reactors at this now three-reactor complex. You can contact Russell Lowes for presentations or for questions at russlowes@gmail.com Documentation to this article can be found at www.SafeEnergyAnalyst.org

It shouldn’t be this way. The Government should be part of the solution – not a handicap. However, this is how the landscape has been settling and it is becoming apparent that with the influence of special interests, nuclear energy is going to get a huge amount of our tax dollars, while other, much cheaper energy strategies, are shorted. With so much potential for energy efficiency, this would give us time to make the transition to renewables.

Some people say that nuclear energy has become outdated. I would go so far as to say it was never in vogue, in a valid way. It has always cost too much. It has always taken too much water. It has always had too many environmental impacts. And, it has always had too many security risks. I could go on.

Nuclear energy is so expensive compared to the realistic options, like a blend of renewables and energy-saving efficiencies, that we do not need any more nukes anywhere in the world. I cannot emphasize this enough.Yet, the current energy bills in Congress promote nuclear energy to the tune of a 150% expansion.(1)

To fully appreciate the wrongheadedness of this policy, it is important to understand the actual cost of nuclear power per kilowatt generated. Here are the details:

Construction costs: Nuclear plants cost a lot to build. A nuclear plant in the last round of nuclear reactor construction cost $3100 per kilowatt to install in 1988, running out the inflation with an online inflation calculator (like the Bureau of Labor Standards’ http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl) yields $5642 in 2008 real (adjusted for inflation) dollars.

Any nuclear plant that is being planned today will not be finished until 2022 or so, which if a 4% inflation is run out from the $5642, it comes to $9003 per kilowatt installed. This figure is probably low, as many plants that were canceled in the late 1980s were going to be much higher than the average $3100, but let us use this figure.

The next step in projecting nuclear costs includes projecting capital payback, meaning what the annual capital payback is over 30 years, the interest associated, plus fees and taxes. To make this simple for analysis, this is put in terms of a capitalized payback or levelized fixed charge rate of 14% per year for 30 years. So $9000/kilowatt of capacity times 14% equals $1260 to be paid per year for 30 years, for a total capital payback of $37,800 for each kilowatt of capacity, plus some fees for the last 10 years which I will ignore here.

The next step is to project the lifespan and the average percentage that the plant will deliver energy at (or capacity factor). I have looked the literature over extensively and believe the best estimates are 40 years and an 85% capacity factor. So take that 1 KW capacity times the 40 years times 8766 hours per year times 85% and you get the number of kilowatt-hours (KWH) that you are likely to get from that 1 KW of capacity, or 298,044 KWH. Divide this KWH figure into the capital cost of $37,800 and you get 12.7 cents per KWH for construction and related payback costs alone.

Operation and maintenance: Nuclear power plants are expensive to operate. After the initial outlay to build the plant, there is the additional cost of fuel,operation and maintenance, which an inter- disciplinary industry report called the Keystone study(2) found to be at 4.3 cents per KWH for the future. To take the capital cost of 12.7 cents per KWH and add the operating cost of 4.3, you get 17 cents per KWH.

Transmission and Distribution: Finally, you have to add in a transmission and distribution cost, which should be about 7-9 cents per KWH in the future, which bring us to about 25 cents per KWH. When you compare that that 25 cents per KWH cost of generating nuclear energy to the cost of saving energy, there is an over 8:1 ratio.(3) Surveys of our nation’s states that have energy efficiency programs show it costs $0.03 to save energy per kilowatt-hour saved. This is one eighth the cost of nuclear energy’s $0.25/KWH, not counting the long-term or other hidden costs of nuclear energy.

• Reduction of raw materials to be manufactured to make the same products; and

• Improved architectural design.

A number of U.S. states have statewide programs that promote the use of energy efficiency. The success hasbeen most pronounced in California. See the accompanying U.S. map that tells you how much energy could be saved if each state simply went to California’s current level of energy efficiency.(4) Note that California is still dramatically improving. So for Arizona as an example, we will be able to save more than the 52% listed.

With such a stark reduction in energy consumption, many of our current electrical plants could have their useful lives stretched out, until renewables and other technologies come into play. That is why it is so outrageous that Congress is supporting an expansion of nuclear energy as a “solution” to our energy problem. First, after so many of your tax dollars have been spent by our government on nukes, it is outrageous that nuclear energy is still so expensive. Second, it is outrageous in a good way that energy efficiency is so cheap. Third, it is outrageous that since this price differential is so high that we would even be considering new nuclear – or coal – plants as an option any more.

(1) EPA Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, 6/23/09

This may seem like blasphemy: the House Bill on energy known as The American Clean Energy Act is the most detrimental bill the House has passed since the Patriot Act. Like the Patriot Act, it is not what it says it is. It should never become law.

It is not a clean energy bill.

It is not a pro-solution climate bill.

It is not a pro-American bill.

It is an energy giveaway bill.

It is a bill that deletes Clean Air Act authority for the Environmental Protection Agency over nearly 50 coal plants.

It is a bill that sets up an unfair energy tax system called cap & trade tax (CTT).

It is a bill that sets up CTT, that doubles as a financial derivative, which would be responsible for economic deterioration of U.S. economy, just like the CDOs and CDSs that helped cause the current economic downturn.

Further, the Senate bill versions are just as bad or worse.

At issue is a battle that has a huge bearing on the United States and world’s environment, economy and social order. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, or ACESA, has passed the U.S. House and is now in a number of different forms before the Senate. With the change in the administration and increased majorities in Congress, we had all hoped that the 111th Congress would act fast to implement a new climate bill to start controlling our pollution output like carbon dioxide.

The House Bill (HR 2454), however, is replete with problems, as are the Senate versions currently being drafted. While it is significant that a house of Congress has, for the first time, passed an energy & climate bill, it is also important that the bill that Congress ultimately enacts imposes a tax on energy in a way that will discourage excess energy use. That is because energy use analysis indicates that price increases are the most effective way to curtail energy use, improve the way we use energy and decrease pollution.

THE PROBLEMS WITH ACESA

There are numerous problems with the 1428-page House Bill (HB)1, so I do not attempt to address all of them.Rather, I will highlight three main areas that need to be corrected in a final bill if it is to be effective:

Emissions trading, also known as “cap & trade tax” is a way of controlling pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. Under “cap & trade tax” the government sets a limit, or “cap” on the total amount of a pollutant that can be emitted.Companies or other groups are issued permits that give them the right to emit a certain percentage of that amount of pollutant (“credits” or “allowances”).The total amount of credits or allowances cannot exceed the cap.Companies that need to increase their emission allowance can buy credits from other companies who don’t need all of their credit because they pollute less.This transfer is the “trade.”Thus, companies have a financial incentive to reduce the amount of pollution they emit and a disincentive to exceed their set allowance.

While cap & trade is a tax in that the U.S. Government will be collecting auction fees/taxes, it is also a financial derivative, in that the certificates issued through auction will derive their value from the sold “right” to pollute.

ACESA includes a cap & trade tax system where the certificates would be issued through an auction.By requiring companies to buy their certificates, the government forces them to pay for the “right” to pollute.When he was campaigning for the presidency, candidate Obama promised that under his cap and trade plan, 100% of the certificates would be auctioned—in other words, no one would get a free ride to pollute.

Unfortunately, the house bill only requires 15% of the emissions certificates to be auctioned, or paid for, during the first year.That figure will increase to only 70% by 2030.Obviously, this reduced auction amount is a major disappointment to those of us who want to see polluters, not the public, bear the financial burden of their pollution.

The reduced auction amount isn’t the only problem with the cap & trade provision in the bill. Although cap & trade systems can be effective they are also susceptible to abuse.Opportunists are able to take advantage of the complexity of the mechanism to “game the system.”To curb this potential problem, the House Bill sets up an oversight committee under the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to regulate hedge fund and other derivative-related aspects of cap & trade. However, it is only a cursory oversight arrangement and there is legitimate concern that it would not prevent market manipulation, which in turn could lead to a new economic bubble in this new speculative market and ultimately hurt the U.S. economy. Illicit cap & trade tax schemes have already been exposed in Europe.2

All of these problems with the cap & trade tax approach could be eliminated by implementing a simple carbon tax.3

The House Bill is also problematic because it proposes to strip EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.4This authority was only recently recognized by the United States Supreme Court, and EPA is only now moving toward exercising it; however, the House Bill would reverse that progress.

At least one analysis of the House Bill indicates that this proposed de-authorization of the EPA would mean that 47 coal plants will be able to be built without EPA regulation. Clearly, that outcome is contrary to any meaningful goal to reduce carbon emissions.

ACESA Funds coal and nuclear energy more heavily than increased efficiency and renewables.

Finally, the proposed funding under the bill for new technologies has misplaced priorities and incentives.Under the House Bill, $60 billion would be allocated for “clean coal” carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. CCS is a technology that would capture the carbon coming out of the coal stack and then sequester it so that it does not get into the atmosphere.

There are a number of CCS different possibilities in the process of being developed, but none has been demonstrated on a commercial scale, and it is unlikely that CCS will be economically practical.Yet, this is the largest chunk of money directly listed in the bill for any one technology. While energy efficiency and renewable energies get $90 billion by 2025, or $6 billion per year or so, that is only a fraction of the amount that coal and nuclear energy will get.

One of the Senate bills includes loan incentives that would give nuclear and coal CCS hundreds of billions of dollars in aid.The decision to disproportionately encourage these two technologies with financial aid and incentives in a “clean energy” bill is simply baffling.Keep in mind that nuclear has been shown to be an uneconomical technology, and that coal CCS, even if it works, will lead to much more coal mining. The truth is, there is no clean coal, nor would any reasonable person consider nuclear energy a “clean” fuel given its significant waste problem.

Yet the bill’s definition of clean energy is so loose, under it coal CCS and nuclear energy will be considered “clean.”And here’s the kicker--these two technologies, coal CCS and nuclear, are so expensive (in the range of 25-35 cents per kilowatt-hour for new units) that if we put our dollars into them, they will suck so many dollars away from energy efficiency and renewables (in the range of 2-25 cents per kilowatt-hour) that there would not be enough money to solve the climate solutions we desperately need.

In summary, here is what needs to happen to make these bills a positive force: 1) restructure cap & trade tax or, better yet, replace it with a simple carbon tax; 2) do not remove the Clean Air Act authority from the EPA; and 3) define clean as clean, and re-design this bill to fund the technologies that are truly clean.

You can call your senators and stress how irresponsible the cap & trade system is. If it passes the Senate, you can then call your Representatives and Senators to ask them to block the authorization of the reconciliation of these two terrible bills.

----------------------

Note: An earlier version of this article appeared in the Sierra Club Rincon Group newsletter, under my new appointment as Energy Subcommittee Chair for this Group.

1Available at http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090701/hr2454_house.pdf

Senator McCain announced a new prescription for energy for America in a recent speech. He is now calling for 45 nuclear reactors to be completed by 2030 and an additional 55 reactors to be completed thereafter.(1) He had been promoting nuclear energy as a solution to global warming for years. But now. . .

So much for nukes being the solution for global warming. With McCain's 45/100 nukes, even if we had 100 nukes tomorrow and even IF THEY DID reduce carbon emissions, 100 nukes would not be enough to play a significant role.

However, John McCain probably wants to get his foot in the door and push for many more, eventually. The infamous 2003 MIT study postulated 1000 nukes.(2) Some organizations and individuals since then have postulated many more.

The reason that 100 nukes will amount to about a drop in a bucket is this. The United States generates about 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.(3) Even if that electrical production was used to displace coal, and CO2 production of the twenty steps of the nuclear energy cycle was not counted, then it would save coal plants from putting about 400 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. 400 million is only 7% of 6 billion U.S. CO2 emissions.

However, much of this nuclear capacity would displace solar, energy efficiency technologies, natural gas, etc. These technologies produce far less CO2 than coal, so the displacement would be much lower.

It is important to remember that nuclear energy has twenty steps of CO2 production, from mining to waste management. It produces a huge amount of CO2.

Let’s focus on the costs of McCain's 45/100 Rx.

In the early part of this decade, nuclear reactors were projected by the industry to cost $1500 to 2000 per kilowatt of capacity. Then about two years ago, a utility put the cost at $2600. Then estimates started really climbing. Over the last two years, estimates have increased all the way to $10,000 per kilowatt, 5-7-fold what the projection was just a few years ago.

With these new cost estimates flying out of the utilities' planning staffs, the 100 reactors would cost about $9-10 billion each if they averaged 1000 megawatts each. Most reactor designs these days are larger, though, ranging from 1100 to 1600 megawatts. So let's say the average size changes from the current 1000 to the future 1350 MW. At the most recent utility estimate of $10,000 per kilowatt, 100 reactors would total $1.35 trillion.

If these plants were all finished in the same year, to make it simple, and the payback (levelized fixed charge rate) was 15% per year, the annual payback would average $202.5 billion per year. If we shared that expense over 350 million U.S. citizens over 30 years, that would be $579 per person per year for each of those 30 years.

To put this into another perspective, the total energy bill for our country is about $900 billion per year. That is for gas for our cars, electricity, all manufacturing, commercial and residential consumption for heating, cooling, everything. Just for this measly 100 reactors, with a boost from 19% of energy to probably 25% or so (considering we won't have any money left to spend on energy efficiency or renewables, so energy growth will remain high), there will simply not be enough benefit to outweigh the costs.

All this nuclear plant capacity for $579 per citizen of the U.S. for 30 years, and we haven't even put on the costs of fuel, operation and maintenance, waste storage, environmental remediation from terrorist or other environmental breaches!

--Russell Lowes

1) Public Record, at http://www.pubrecord.org/index.php?view=article&id=144%3Amccains-nuclear-power-policy-identical-to-bush-administrations&option=com_content2) Energy Information Administration at http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/flash/flash.html3) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Future of Nuclear Power, 2003.

The Senators from Connecticut and Virginia thought they could pull a fast one. They thought they could play the game the Bush Administration is so into, the mis-naming game. Heathy Forests runs down our forests. No Child Left Behind leaves an underfunded ill-conceived program putting our public school system at risk. So why not call this the Climate Security Act?

Security is the opposite of what this act was intended to bolster. This Senate bill was intended to instead increase the profit of the few at the expense of the many. The names of the authors/sponsors of the bill could have been a warning clue. The Lieberman-Warner bill had numerous problems in it.

However, there were two problems of epic proportions. One was promotion of a massive nuclear energy system for the U.S. This bill would have had the effect of promoting the nationalization of financing for nuclear energy.

The other was the promotion of an inherently unaccountable cap & trade pollution-“rights” trading system. This proposal is so non-transparent and complex that headlines of the future would have been declaring fraud after fraud, corruption after corruption.

Funny thing is, there was no mention of “nuclear energy” in the bill. The bill just mentioned that there would be funding for low-carbon technologies and then it defined low carbon in such a way that didn’t include life cycle. It defined it so that nuclear energy would be an easy recipient, without counting the life cycle energy inputs.

On a life cycle basis, nuclear energy produces massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas. On a standalone reactor basis, nuclear energy does not produce very much. Even while a reactor is running, it sometimes requires grid electricity or backup diesel generators to be assisting while power calibration between the reactor and the grid is occurring, for example.

However, this minimal on-site power requirement is dwarfed by the twenty steps of the nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to enrichment, from milling to construction of waste facilities, from fuel fabrication to environmental cleanup of nuclear energy and waste accidents, nuclear energy is a CO2 hog, just like coal.

The authors of this bill knew that nuclear energy would be the recipient of the endowment. Karl Grossman pointed this out in his article, “Half-Trillion Dollars for Nukes!” (See http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman05312008.html ).

Let’s just run some simple numbers about how the vast nuclear program of this bill would hurt America and you, the taxpayer. This program is just the beginning of what some would like to see become of a beefed-up nuclear energy “solution.” In the early days of this decade, Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that in order for nuclear energy to have a significant impact on our energy strategy, it would take 1,000 reactors. Another major study since then put a range at 1,000 to 2,500 reactors. Our average size reactor in the U.S. is, coincidently, 1000 megawatts, or 1,000,000 kilowatts. Here’s the scoop on costs for such a program. – Number of reactors: 1,000– Size per reactor average: 1,000,000 kilowatts of capacity– Cost per kilowatt, approx. $9,000 – Multiplying the above figures: $9,000,000,000,000 (9 trillion dollars)

Simple enough? Well the payback on that $9 trillion is about 15% per year for a thirty-year loan schedule in a free enterprise system. That would equate to $1.35 trillion per year. If citizens in the U.S. average 350 million over that 30-year period, the amount paid per year in the U.S. would average $3857 per person! This is just simple math. This $1.35 trillion for loan repayment compares with the total $900 billion or so that the U.S. spent in 2007 on ALL energy costs (electricity, gas for vehicles, heating oil, etc.). There is no getting around it – nuclear energy is a 20th Century technology that keeps rearing its ugly head.

The renowned Rocky Mountain Institute shows how nuclear energy is about 7 times the price of energy efficiency. Energy efficiency combined with a solid renewable energy program is the centerpiece of any sound energy policy. Nuclear energy is now about 3 times the cost of wind energy, and a little higher than what concentrated solar power is going for.

On the issue of cap & trade/pollution-rights trading, and the much more effective program called “carbon tax.” there is a great website called www.carbontax.org

Quoting from this website:

Why revenue-neutral carbon taxes are essential,

The next Administration and Congress will be called upon to address 21st Century climate realities. In a carbon-constrained world, a permanent, essential feature of U.S. policy must be a carbon tax that reduces the emissions that are driving global warming.

* A carbon tax is a tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas). * A carbon tax is the most economically efficient means to convey crucial price signals and spur carbon-reducing investment and low-carbon behavior. * Carbon taxes should be phased in so businesses and households have time to adapt. * A carbon tax should be revenue-neutral: government can soften the impacts of added costs through rebates or by reducing other taxes ("tax-shifting"). * Support for a carbon tax is growing steadily among public officials; economists; scientists; policy experts; leading business, religious, and environmental figures; and on the opinion pages of leading publications.

--from carbontax.org

The next climate act should be a real climate security act. Let’s make it well-known that nuclear and fossil energies need to be phased out, and that energy efficiencies and renewables need to be the centerpiece of any effective legislation.

It is difficult to expound on the potential for terrorism at our nation’s 104 commercial reactors, without sounding ridiculous – that is, without sounding like you’re making stuff up. That’s because the bloopers that occur are beyond the pale. Sometimes the bloopers are specific actions. Of even more concern, sometimes the bloopers are the very policies set in place. Ponder these real-life, yet hard-to-believe, citations on the safety and security of nuclear energy.

Florida Power & Light is facing $208,000 in federal fines because firing pins were removed from the weapons of Wackenhut [rent-a-cop] guards at its Turkey Point nuclear power plant. The NRC said it was prohibiting two former Wackenhut employees, Jon Brumer and Oscar Aguilar, from working in NRC-regulated facilities for five years because both deliberately violated federal policies by removing the firing pins.

--John Dorschner, Miami Herald, 1/23/08

NRC officials said the fine was being proposed because a 2006 investigation found that security officers employed by Wackenhut Nuclear Services were willfully inattentive to duty (sleeping) from 2004 through 2006.

--Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) News Release, 4/9/08

Two Indian Point nuclear power plant security guards have been suspended for coming to work with cocaine in their systems, a spokesman for the plants' owner said. One guard was tested for drugs after leaving her post unexpectedly and failing to respond when commanders radioed her . . . she was found sick in a bathroom.

--Newsday, “2 Indian Point guards test positive for cocaine, are suspended,” 3/22/08

NRC REMINDS NEW REACTOR APPLICANTS AND EXISTING PLANTS OF NEED TO GUARD AGAINST COUNTERFEIT PARTS

--Title of NRC News Release, 4/8/08

Undercover Congressional investigators set up a bogus company and obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March that would have allowed them to buy the radioactive materials needed for a so-called dirty bomb. The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, demonstrated once again that the security measures put in place since the 2001 terrorist attacks to prevent radioactive materials from getting into the wrong hands are insufficient, according to a G.A.O. report.

Poor safeguards at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant allowed M-4 assault rifles to enter the facility unchecked and be improperly stored in a secure zone, United Press International has learned. According to the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight, an independent government watchdog, the cargo contained 30 M-4 assault rifles.

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001 my phone rang in my office. It was a national reporter who asked me to explain what would happen if a well-fueled jumbo jet were to crash into a reactor. I was honest to my own heart that day and declined to take the interview. One week later Mohammed ElBeredei did the right thing, and was honest too. [The Secretary General] of the International Atomic Energy Agency declared to the world that if a jumbo jet hit a reactor it would cause a Chernobyl-like event and that no reactor in the world could withstand such a hit.

--Mary Olson, Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Planes are not on the list of weapons that reactors must be prepared to survive. One of the five [NRC] commissioners, Gregory B. Jaczko, has called for the panel to require design changes to reduce vulnerability, but the other four [NRC commissioners] seem unpersuaded. At the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade association, Adrian Heymer, senior director for new plant deployment, said designers had analyzed existing plants and made many changes that cost little but made the new designs more difficult to attack. But, in general, Mr. Heymer said, protecting against terrorism was a government function. Speaking about protection against aircraft attacks, Mr. Jaczko said in an interview, “We’ve left it in the hands of Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and the reactor vendors, who are building these plants, to do what they think is right in this area, and to me that’s clearly not the answer.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded Monday that it is impractical for nuclear power plant operators to try to stop terrorists from crashing an airliner into a reactor. Plant operators instead should focus on limiting radioactive release from any such airborne attack, the agency said in a revised defense plan for America's nuclear plants. The agency approved the new defense plan, most of which is secret, by a 5-0 vote at a brief hearing in which it was not discussed in any detail.

The arrests of three men who allegedly tried to sell contraband uranium for $1 million show how a shadowy black market for nuclear components has survived. . . officials tracking the illicit global trade in radioactive materials said the arrests underscored the risk of nuclear substances falling into terrorist hands. Should that happen, "the consequences would be so catastrophic, the world would be a different place the next day," said Richard Hoskins, who supervises a database of stolen, missing, smuggled or unauthorized radioactive materials for the International Atomic Energy Agency. In 2006 alone, the U.N. nuclear watchdog registered 252 reported cases — a 385 percent increase since 2002.

Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we know about. It is quite possible that a terrorist group could acquire enough nuclear material to build a bomb.

--Jay Davis, Washington Post, “After A Nuclear 9/11,” 3/25/08

. . .Quoted the following from an October 24, 2001 Associated Press story: “Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, encouraged followers in 1994 to strike such a plant, officials say. An FBI agent has testified in court that one of Yousef’s followers told him in 1995 of plans to blow up a nuclear plant. And in 1999 the NRC acknowledged to Congress that it had received a credible threat of a terrorist attack against a nuclear power facility.” In a September 21 press release, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated “the NRC did not specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s and 767s and nuclear plants were not designed to withstand such crashes.” A nuclear meltdown could occur in a nuclear plant’s reactor or its spent fuel pool. The pool stores irradiated fuel rods after they are commercially “spent” and become high level nuclear waste.

--Michael Steinberg, “Greenpeace Urges Shut Down Of U.S. Nukes” Z magazine, February 2002

An under-reported attack on a South African nuclear facility last month demonstrates the high risk of theft of nuclear materials by terrorists or criminals. Such a crime could have grave national security implications for the United States or any of the dozens of countries where nuclear materials are held in various states of security. Shortly after midnight on Nov. 8, four armed men broke into the Pelindaba nuclear facility 18 miles west of Pretoria, a site where hundreds of kilograms of weapons-grade uranium are stored.

A sleeping illegal immigrant was accidentally carried onto the property, it was reported Thursday. Edison officials said that a man was found on the San Onofre property. . . on July 25, the North County Times reported. The rail cars carry freight inside the San Onofre grounds and pass by an area where Edison stores spent fuel -- highly radioactive material that can no longer produce power [which, however, can still melt down].

Twelve Reasons to Oppose Nuclear Energy and Support a Green Energy Future

We have a complete set of energy solutions: solar cells, wind turbines, concentrating solar, ocean current and wave energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, and the list goes on.(1) As these technologies mature, we can quickly reduce nuclear, coal and gas use.

The most environmentally and economically destructive sources of electricity should be reduced now, as other technologies emerge. The phase-out of nuclear, coal and gas electrical energy will reduce global warming while freeing up monies for renewables, efficiencies and energy storage.

This list focuses on the nuclear energy option. Nuclear energy is being heavily promoted with millions of dollars in public relations budgets by the nuclear industry. This compilation will expose the nuclear myths.

California and Germany are two examples of how to make the switch toward a safe and effective energy future. In California, the per capita energy has gone down through a myriad of efficiency techniques.(2)In Germany, solar production has gone up radically, through a savvy system of support, which is turning Germany, hardly known for sunny days, into the top solar country.(3) See the graph below for the California example.(2)

Twelve Reasons to Oppose Nuclear Energy and to Support Renewables and Efficiencies.

1) Nuclear Energy is Too Expensive. In 2002, industry estimates for building reactors were in the $1500-2000 per kilowatt range.(4) Estimates crept up to $4000 by 2007.(5) Then, the Moody’s ratings firm projected around $5000.(6) Even more recently, Florida Power and Light estimated between $5300 and $8200 per kilowatt.(7) This amount of capital would cause nuclear energy to cost far more than the alternatives.

The record of nuclear reactor costs in the 1980s, about $3100 in 1987, combined with general inflation would yield about $6496 in 2014 dollars.(8) The current round of U.S. reactors being built is likely to start up in 2022. In the 1970s and 80s the average overrun for nuclear construction was more than 220%.(9) This record of massive overruns compared to roughly 50% for coal plants.(10)

At $9000/KW, 1000 reactors would cost $9 trillion. The capital payback would be $1.26 trillion per year, exceeding the $1.1 trillion we spend on ALL energy in the U.S. annually. This would be an 114% increase in total energy cost, just to cover the capital expenditure of construction of a robust nuclear program. This does not include fuel costs, operation and maintenance, nor the occasional accident or early retirement of some of these reactors. With this much going into nuclear energy alone, the money available for solar and other real solutions would dry up.The capital markets would be dominated by a sliver of the American energy system.

2) Expansion of Nuclear Energy Would Worsen Global Warming. Even if nuclear energy had the CO2 advantage the nuclear industry claims, building at least U.S. 1000 reactors would be required to significantly reduce global warming.(11) Over 20 years there would be one reactor completed weekly. The world has never seen anything near that kind of construction performance.(12) Additionally, uranium resource depletion is occurring. Within about thirty years, the amount of energy required just to mine, mill and build reactors would exceed the CO2 levels of natural gas plants.(13) It would worsen thereafter, with possible reactor shut-downs, due to fuel availability problems.

3) Nuclear Energy Represents a Long-Term Negative Net Energy. Nuclear plants already have a long-term negative net energy and CO2 level higher than fossil fuels, if you count the energy to manage the waste over the legally required one million years.

4) The Most Stripping of our Public Lands through Mining Would Happen with Nuclear Energy. With ore quality diminishing, mining levels would skyrocket. To illustrate, when we have to resort to mining granite for uranium, the weight of ore would equal fifty times the weight of coal per kilowatt-hour.(14)

5) High and Permanent Government Subsidy Is Required. Nuclear energy is too risky for investment without its insurance renewed by Congress (the Price-Anderson Act, 1957). The property cost of a major accident could top half a trillion dollars.(15) Additional medical costs are waived by the Act. The industry has said if it does not get the government to guarantee loans, it will not build any reactors.(16)

6) Unacceptable Accident Potential Persists. Analysis has put the chance of at least three meltdowns at 50% if the world opts for the large number of 2500 nuclear reactors. The ecological and economical impact of one meltdown would dwarf the impact of Hurricane Katrina, with thousands of years of radiological damage.(17)

7) National Security Is Compromised. After the September 11 attacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said reactors could withstand impact of a 747. They have since retracted this statement.(18) This same terrorist network may target a nuclear reactor in the future. Additionally, every hot on-site reactor spent-fuel pool is a perfect terrorist target, with waste that would melt down from such an impact. These targets are not reasonably protected.

8) Nuclear Energy Has the Most Water Usage. It has lower thermal efficiency compared to fossil-fuel, at 33%, compared to 40% for coal, and 45% for natural gas. Nuclear energy requires more water for cooling. The Palo Verde plant, 35 miles upwind of Phoenix, requires about 55% the water of a city with a half-million people, like Tucson, Arizona, or 120,000 acre feet of annual water use.(19)

9) Too Much Radiation Is Produced. Governmental studies conclude that there is no additional safe level of radiation. Radiative gas is released into the air at the reactor site, routinely, increasing cancer risk.(20)

10) Million-Year Waste Legacy Will Burden Society. The EPA had a 10,000 year waste management requirement, until the courts replaced it with a 1,000,000 year time line.(21) Just 5.3 kilograms of Plutonium-239, which has a half life of about 25 thousand years, is enough for a nuclear bomb.(21a)

11) Civil Liberties Would Diminish. With an increase terrorist threat to a highly vulnerable and risky system in place, the pressure on governments to subdue civil liberties will always be there with nuclear energy.

12) Finally, Other Options are Better. U.S. wind energy increased 140% over the last five years, with the capacity of sixty-one nuclear reactors added.(22) With Texas gaining the lead in 2006, one Texan said that Texas will never lose this lead to any other state in the nation. We need bold strides like this.

Americans are far more resourceful than to think that we have to return to an over-subsidized outdated electricity option like nuclear energy. We need to use our limited energy dollars for real solutions that work! Support renewables and efficiencies instead of nuclear energy.

Russell J. Lowes, Research Director at SafeEnergyAnalyst.org is the primary author of a book on the nation’s largest nuclear plant upwind of Phoenix, “Energy Options for the Southwest, Part I, Nuclear and Coal Power,” released in 1979. The book played a principal part in the cancellation of two additional reactors at this plant.

It is Just a Matter of Time. . . and It is Just a Matter of Counting the Whole Nuclear Cycle

In one of the comments on my last blog, Tasha Nelson insists in a questioning way, "I would imagine nuclear power still emits far fewer greenhouse gases overall." This is the conventional thinking. . . thinking that will hit a hard wall of thought revolution. Over the next decade or so, reassessment of economically mined uranium reserves will come into clearer focus.

By then there will be a small number of reactors being built around the globe, as the industry tries to keep pace with the number of reactors that are being retired, UNLESS the industry gets the full support of the U.S. and world governments, with additional massive subsidy, on the order of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.

If complete socialization for nuclear power happens, no one knows how many reactors will be built. If this happens, while we will have a socialistic system for nuclear energy, we will not be able to afford it for any other energy industry, such as solar. We would have a system where the cost of money would be hidden from sight, causing all sorts of irrational decisions to come into play. The general public would pay the cost of this irrationality in the long run.

In either event, the nuclear industry will be trying to play catch-up. Reactors have already started to drop off. Of the 439 reactors we currently have, globally, they will be retiring quicker than they are being built (without a massive global subsidization). In fact, a leveling off of the number of reactors worldwide is already starting. See the graph below:

But, back to the question at-hand:

In a nutshell, won't nuclear energy generate less CO2 than coal and other sources? There has been some serious work on this issue. On the other hand, there has been some self-serving nuclear industry work on this issue. With much of the industry's estimates, there is a circular logic where the reports cite each other, with information generated by the industry that is, at best, an optimistic interpretation of the data. In the realm of independent studies, the most detailed and documented work I have obtained is at www.stormsmith.nl

This work, done by two analysts named Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Phillip Smith, has been peer-reviewed. It is collaborated by other works. From what I can tell, it is only disagreed with to any significant degree by nuclear industry-affiliated entities. For example, there is the nuclear trade group, the World Nuclear Association, which ironically gives itself the byline, Clean Air Energy. Their study is very brief, and has nowhere near the quality level of documentation. The legitimate independent studies that review Storm and Smith only tend to agree on the major points, with less significant points of disagreements here and there.

Storm & Smith conclude:– In the short term, nuclear power is much cleaner than all fossil fuels, if you don't count the energy required over the next million years (the EPA required waste management period), However, – In the long term, nuclear power will become dirtier and dirtier, emitting more and more greenhouse gas emissions, as we quickly deplete our uranium reserves. – The U.S. currently imports over 90% of its uranium, and only has 7% of the world's diminishing reserves. – Going down to lower-grade ores will deplete the short-term net energy gain of nuclear power, and at some point push this short-term gain into the negative realm, with greenhouse gas (GHG) production going through the roof. To give you a graphic illustration, uranium mining of granite would require about 50 times the weight of coal that is mined per kilowatt-hour produced. – After about 70 years, the ore that can be economically mined (using short-term thinking) will run out – and this is on the basis of current capacity, not expanded levels of world nuclear capacity.

The above second point gets to the last point that Tasha made in her post. She asks, "Also-hasn't there been an underinvestment in uranium mine development the past 20 years or so, leading to some of the shortfalls we are seeing now?" The answer to that depends on perspective. The industry has numerous mines that were supposed to be in operation by now. This includes the largest planned new mine, under preliminary development in Canada. It just flooded with water last year, putting off its opening for years. The easiest mining has already occurred. From one perspective, the industry is feeling the reduction of higher grade ores and cannot easily keep up with the demand.

When I first started writing on nuclear power and alternatives, back in the late 1970s, the typical quality of ore was higher than that mined today. Back then, it was common to mine ore that was 2500-3000 parts per million. Today the average is around 1500. To further compound the problems, back then, there was a lot of soft rock ore being mined. Soft rock is easier to mine than hard rock for the obvious reason that it is easier to crush. It takes less energy. Today, more and more hard rock is being mined. The twin problems are decreases in ore grade plus the harder-to-process rock.

Then, there is a third problem, and that is access to the ore itself. About 50% of the current mined uranium comes from below surface mining, going deeper and deeper. The lowest apples have been picked.

It is also true, as Tasha suggests, that there hasn't been enough investment in mining. One question comes to mind: who is responsible for that? However, this question is irrelevant in a way. What is the current shortfall in mining? The current mining levels are at about 50 kilo-tonnes (kt) of ore per year. The current usage of ore by nuclear reactors is about 67 kt per year. Over recent years, the industry has augmented this shortage of production with ore reserves and other smaller sources like mixed oxide fuels and conversion of weapons stocks to commercial stocks, particularly from Russia. At the rate we are using up these stocks, if mining does not jump significantly, complete depletion of stocks will occur by 2015 at the latest. The price of uranium will skyrocket. So much for "cheap" nuclear fuel of days gone by.

There is a final thing to add to this. Nobody wants to hear this. It is avoided like the proverbial elephant in the room, avoided like the plague. The nature of nuclear waste is that it is transgenic. It is changing its own state through irradiation of all the ingredients of the waste. It is creating gases. It is creating liquids. It is also irradiating its container, changing the properties of whatever the container is made out of (with few exceptions).

What you might store as a near perfect rectangle today, could be quite a different shape in thousands of years. What this means is that it will off-gas, migrate, and as it is well known, go through periods of increased and decreased beta, gamma and alpha radiation over many centuries. Over many millennia. Someone is required by U.S. law to safeguard this waste for one million years. "Someone" is the word because no one knows who will be around for that long.

I will soon be writing a report on the cost of a million years of nuclear waste. To make a long story short, to guard that waste will clearly cost more energy input and create more greenhouse gases than any other current energy option under serious consideration.

In the long run, because of its waste, and because of its depletion of resources, nuclear energy creates more greenhouse gas than any other option. Remember these words in a few hundred thousand years, while you are just beginning to understand how to manage all this junk.

I was wondering, shouldn't we reduce our oil consumption because so much of it is imported, and wouldn’t nuclear power be a good source to depend on?

Answer:

The nuclear energy industry answer usually goes something like this: America needs nuclear power to reduce its foreign dependency on oil. France became more energy independent because of its nuclear energy program. America needs to use all energy options, including nuclear, to make us more self-reliant.

I get a chuckle from this, because I too like self-reliance. I like the concept of relative energy independence. I think it would be wise to quickly wean ourselves off of foreign oil – and domestic oil. However, these statements are erroneous.

Number 2: France imports all of its uranium; hence France did not become more energy independent by going with more nuclear energy. As stated, the U.S. imports over 90% of its uranium. To give you a sense of how much material that is, I will explain:

One typical reactor in the U.S., at 1000 megawatts each, running for one year at full capacity requires about 200 tonnes of processed uranium (called yellowcake due to its texture and color. A tonne, also referred to as a metric tonne, is a measurement of mass equal to 1000 kilograms). This comes out to somewhere around 0.023 grams of yellowcake per kilowatt-hour. Sounds like a very tiny amount, doesn't it? The nuclear industry likes to promote such images of efficiency.

However, the ore which that yellowcake came from is currently mined is at a very small percentage of uranium. In the 1970s the common percentage, or assay level, was at .3% or 3000 parts per million (ppm). That means for every kilogram (1000 grams) of uranium produced, only an amount of only 3 grams of uranium was contained in the rock. Today the assay level has gone down to an average of 1500 ppm, or .015%. Soon, when uranium content goes down even further, the amount of ore mining will exceed the amount of coal extracted to produce the same amount of energy.

So, for one reactor to run for one year at full capacity, it takes about 1.3 million tonnes of ore. (It is actually more than this because they do not extract all the uranium.) This compares with a coal plant of the same capacity at 2.0 million tonnes of coal. There are much greater reserves of coal, with energy content staying very similar over the years. On the other hand, uranium is going down in assay level very quickly.

There are forecasters that say that the current assay level of uranium will be depleted within the next ten years. Assay levels will go down and down throughout the next 70 years or so (at current nuclear power levels), when the practically mine-able uranium is depleted. These analyses are well reasoned and rely on the nuclear industry's own data.

Again, the nuclear industry will tell you, while focusing on the smaller numbers, that it only takes a couple hundred tonnes per year of nuclear fuel to operate a commercial reactor. This is much less than it takes of coal or oil to produce the same amount of energy. BUT WAIT A MINUTE! Remember, they are talking about the finished product, not the raw product. Right now, when you look at the forty-year life cycle of a nuclear reactor, it takes more mining of uranium ore, by weight, than it takes of coal by weight, per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.

Ponder that for a moment. The uranium has reduced in quality over the last few decades and is now so low in percentage of uranium that it will take more earthmoving for nuclear power than it takes for coal. And compared to oil or natural gas, nuclear power's raw form of energy comes from ore that will far exceed the raw form of energy obtained from oil and gas. There are no open pit mines or mountain top removal for oil and natural gas!

Number 3: We need to use all of our options? That’s like a poor family trying to get out of the poor house by regularly eating at the most expensive place in town along with all the other food options. We’re in a pickle here. We need to use the most cost-effective solutions that are the least damaging to the environment, and best for people.

Number 4: The reality regarding nuclear power is that it has much less energy potential under our current nuclear power program technology, and that there is less energy to produce from the remaining uranium than from the oil, coal or natural gas.

So who really believes that nuclear power is good for energy independence? People who have not looked into the issue very deeply, that’s who. Or, people who have bought the nuclear industry’s claims hook, line and sinker. That hook is there for a reason.

There is a good deal of controversy in the environmental movement regarding how to continue generating energy to maintain our economic well-being while cutting or eliminating the energy industry's heavy carbon footprint (roughly 40% of carbon emissions are related to energy generation). There are some in the environmental movement, not to mention those in the nuclear industry, who point to nuclear power as a way to reduce carbon emission from the energy sector.

It is true that nuclear generation of electricity itself is not a significant source of carbon emissions, but there are serious economic feasibility, safety, and environmental issues, in addition to carbon emissions associated with the entire life-cycles of nuclear fuels and generation plants.

Southern Arizona is blessed with a number of experts on the industry and its environmental impacts.MyCommentary, records the viewpoints of local activists and concerned citizens. The project brings us the video commentaries of two local nuclear activists, Russell Lowes, and Jack Cohen-Joppa. I share those commentaries with you here:

Commentary by Mr. Cohen-Joppa

Commentary by Mr. Lowes

In addition, the local public affairs program, Political Perspectives with Cynthia Dickstein, covered the nuclear issue recently with Jack Cohen-Joppa and Russell Lowes as her guests. They were joined by Arizona environmental justice advocate Steve Brittle for a panel discussion that constitutes an excellent primer on this topic.